Hail to the Victors Valiant

If you ever loved a place as much as some of us love Michigan then read this and if it doesn't resonate then you should feel awful that you are dead inside, or just unlucky. Saturdays might be killing us these days but there was a time when they were magic, and that time will come again. It hurts so bad now, because it felt so good then.

I remember the day I became a fan. I saw a poster of all those shimmering winged helmets on the wall in my friend Jamie's bedroom. I would stare at it every time I slept over at Jamie's house. That was when I was a boy. Then, as a young man, I stood five feet away from Tshimanga Biakabutuka on the Michigan sideline while he was single handedly dismantling Ohio State. All these years later still pinch myself that I was that close to something that magical. I'll never forget staring up at that scoreboard and then sprinting out onto that field and through that tunnel. I reached up and touched the hands of all the other fans who weren't so lucky as to be working for something they loved and have a field pass dangling from their neck. My heart nearly exploded, and I'll surely have wrinkles someday in those places where my smile bent my face wide. I've never felt the same brand of joy since.

The sun will shine in Ann Arbor again, this I know because that's where I learned that it rises and sets, at least, for some of us.